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Every year, 2 million first-time, full-time undergraduate students enter a degree-granting postsecondary institution in the United States, but more than one-third leave college before obtaining a college degree. This report's analysis shows that job loss has an adverse effect on college persistence for 18- to 24-year-old US working students, that is, whether those students remain in college. Although the effect was minimal during the 2000-08 period, it became significantly magnified after 2008. It is estimated that from the 2009-10 through 2019-20 academic years, involuntary job loss led to a 17 percentage point increase in a working student's probability of dropping out of college in the next academic year. The authors find supporting evidence that the stronger effect in the later period reflects college students' more restricted access to credit card loans after the passage of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009, which imposed tight restrictions on credit extension to individuals who are younger than 21 or older but enrolled in college. For many working students who have difficulty acquiring alternative forms of credit, credit card loans serve as a crucial means of smoothing consumption when income fluctuates. Tightening of the credit card market has a direct impact on these students. This report's findings suggest that employment stability plays a pivotal role in the retention of young working students, and a small contingency fund goes a long way in preventing college dropout due to temporary employment disruptions. While the underlying analysis was conducted using national data, the findings are relevant to New England, where higher education employs 4 percent of the region's workforce, more than twice the national average. Student retention therefore carries implications not only for the individual students seeking a college education, but also for the vitality of the region's labor market. An important caveat is that the report's findings do not imply that credit card loans improve college students' net welfare. While access to credit card loans improves persistence in the short run for unemployed college students, a large credit card debt leads to other adverse consequences and is unlikely the optimal solution to liquidity issues. Instead, the significance of credit card loans in the personal finance of working students reflects a dearth of alternative income assistance to compensate for short-term earnings loss. Extending timely unemployment assistance to college students through either unemployment insurance or student financial aid programs could potentially insure these students against unforeseen job-loss risks and yield retention benefits. Policymakers concerned with the retention of working college students should consider these options and explore them to a greater degree.

We document the characteristics of children and young adults identified in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics as having a learning disability and study whether legislative changes in diagnosis criteria have had a noticeable effect determining who receives a diagnosis. We further document that children and young adults identified as a having a learning disability experience less desirable outcomes early in life, including trouble with the police, drug use, violent behavior, incarceration, self-reported low levels of well-being, lower educational attainment, and less favorable labor market outcomes. We also find that the mothers of children diagnosed with learning disabilities are less likely than other mothers to participate in the labor market.

Test-score data show that both low-income and racial-minority children score lower, on average, on states' elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. This report explores the relationship between racial and socioeconomic test-score gaps in New England metropolitan areas and two factors associated with unequal opportunity in education: state equalizing school-aid formulas and geographic segregation of low-income students. The report first explores the degree to which state school aid is progressive, that is, distributed disproportionately to districts with high fractions of students living in poverty; more progressive distributions are associated with smaller test-score gaps in high-poverty metropolitan areas. The second factor explored is poverty segregation; test-score gaps are larger in metropolitan areas where, compared with white children or higher-income children, minority children or low-income children go to school with, or are in school districts with, more students from low-income families. States can alter either or both of these factors via policy changes. States set the terms--and thereby the progressivity--of school-aid policy. Statewide affordable housing policies, such as those in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, if applied more comprehensively, might reduce concentrations of poverty and provide more low-income families access to the higher-quality schools in low-poverty suburban districts.

Connecticut's public K-12 education system relies heavily on local funding, resulting in substantial disparities between affluent districts and low-income districts with a large proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students who are more costly to educate. Despite recent improvements, the existing state aid formula has been criticized for failing to provide sufficient funding to districts with the fewest resources and the highest education costs. To help improve state aid distribution, this report estimates a "cost-capacity gap," which measures the difference between a district's education cost and revenue capacity and uses it as an indicator of the district's need for state education aid. The analysis shows large disparities in the cost-capacity gap across the state. While districts with larger gaps, on average, receive more per-pupil state aid under the current formula compared with smaller-gap districts, the largest-gap districts still receive less aid than they need to close their cost-capacity gaps. As a result, inequity and inadequacy remain in the state's education finance system. To improve the state aid distribution, this report introduces five gap-based formulas. The policy simulations show that by using these gap-based formulas instead of the existing formula the state can target education aid more effectively to school districts with greater need for financial assistance.

Equal educational opportunity is a core American value. Yet many children of low-income or minority racial or ethnic status attend public schools that are lower quality compared with those that white children or high-income children attend. And data indicate that, on average, low-income or minority children score lower on states' elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. Such test-score gaps serve as evidence of unequal educational opportunity. This study uses information from metropolitan areas and from school districts to understand which factors are strongly related to the size of racial and socioeconomic test-score gaps. One key factor is the degree to which state aid to school districts is distributed progressively--that is, distributed disproportionately to districts with high fractions of students living in poverty--with progressive distributions associated with smaller test-score gaps in high-poverty metros or districts. Second, test-score gaps are larger in metropolitan areas and districts where poverty segregation is greater, that is, where, compared with white children or higher-income children, minority children or low-income children go to school with, or are in school districts with, more students from low-income families.

After being sued for inequity and inadequacy in school funding, many states have reformed their education aid policies. Using Connecticut as an example, this paper shows how to design a state education aid formula that can effectively address funding inequity and inadequacy while taking political feasibility into account. It first develops a measure of the gap between education cost and revenue capacity, both of which are estimated using school district characteristics that are outside the direct control of local officials at any given point in time. It then uses each district's cost-capacity gap to evaluate the state's existing education aid distribution. This paper shows that while larger-gap districts, on average, receive greater amounts of state aid per pupil under Connecticut's existing distributions, significant inequity and inadequacy remain. This paper proposes, as a potential solution, a gap-based formula that allocates state aid to close the cost-capacity gaps. The formula includes tools such as minimum and maximum levels of aid to increase its political appeal. The research method and the formula design that this paper presents are sufficiently general and flexible to be adapted easily and applied to other states.

The abrupt closing of college campuses this spring due to the spread of COVID-19 upended the lives of students and their families and disrupted the higher education sector. The impact of these closures and the questions of whether and how to reopen campuses this fall have been widely discussed. Less attention has been paid to the potential consequences for the local economies of the cities and towns that depend heavily on higher education. This issue is particularly important in New England, where in many communities, colleges and universities are among the largest employers and make an outsized contribution to the local economy. The absence of students and campus activities is a major blow to local businesses. And while New England schools generally have avoided large-scale layoffs so far, extended campus shutdowns and pandemic-induced enrollment declines could force some institutions that already are on shaky financial ground to close altogether. Continued disruption to the higher education sector could threaten even financially strong institutions. This brief examines the number of cities and towns in the region that are highly dependent on employment and commerce from institutions whose declining enrollments and low endowments make them particularly vulnerable during this period. These are the communities that are most at risk of economic harm due to major pandemic-related disruptions to higher education. [This report was co-published by the New England Public Policy Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.]

Facing legal challenges and public pressures, Connecticut needs an objective and rigorous study of its public education costs. This study is the first to estimate the cost function of Connecticut public K-12 education and to evaluate the equity and the adequacy in the state's school spending based on regression-estimated education costs. It finds large disparities across districts in education costs and cost-adjusted spending. Districts with the largest enrollments, the highest school-age-child-poverty rates, or the least amount of property wealth, on average, have the highest costs and the lowest cost-adjusted spending. A large percentage of the state's public school students are enrolled in districts where spending is inadequate relative to the predicted cost of achieving a common student performance target, which contributes to student underperformance. Thus, school districts, especially the high-cost ones, need a large amount of additional spending to improve student performance. The research approach used in this paper can be generalized and applied to other states.

Public higher education produces many benefits that are vital to the New England economy, but it is increasingly at risk following years of state budget cuts. In 2017 in New England, real per-student state funding for higher education was lower than it was in 2008, with a double-digit decline in each of the region's states except Maine. States have reduced funding for higher education to address short-term budget gaps caused by recessions and long-term budget gaps attributed to the growing costs of Medicaid and public pensions. Research in this report shows that reductions in state appropriations have resulted in higher tuition and fees, greater student loan debt, decreased resources for education and research, and fewer graduates and approved patent applications from public colleges and universities. If the New England states wish to better meet the educational needs of the region's students and the workforce requirements of employers, policymakers will need to restore some of the reduced appropriations and safeguard public higher education against future budget cuts. This report recommends that policymakers provide robust financial support for public higher education, particularly community colleges, which are the most vulnerable to the negative consequences of state disinvestment. To reduce the chances of having to make state funding cuts, or to at least mitigate future cuts, policymakers should consider both short-term and long-term solutions such as strengthening state budget stabilization funds and addressing long-term state budget gaps. If states need to raise more revenues to safeguard public colleges and universities, the social, economic, and fiscal benefits associated with public higher education likely will justify the additional costs to taxpayers. [The New England Public Policy Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston promotes better public policy in New England by conducting and disseminating objective, high-quality research and analysis of strategically identified regional economic and policy issues.]

While state appropriations are the largest revenue source of the U.S. public university systems, they have declined significantly over the past several decades. Surprisingly, there is little empirical work on the effect of state appropriation cuts on the research productivity of public universities. Helping fill that gap, this paper is the first to examine the role that state appropriations play in public universities' patent production. The results suggest that state appropriation cuts have a negative impact on the number of approved patent applications from public research universities. Lower state appropriations are shown to lead to a reduction in research expenditures, especially wages and salaries paid to research staff.

In aggregate, state appropriations are the largest revenue source for public higher education in the United States. However, these appropriations have significantly declined over past decades, drawing serious concerns about the potential negative impact on schools and students. This paper provides a more comprehensive study of the effects of state appropriations than previous research, while explicitly exploring and testing the heterogeneity of the effects by institutional type. It finds strong evidence of the negative effects of state appropriation cuts in the areas of tuition and fees, student financial aid, instructional and other school expenditures, and degree completion. Community colleges, which serve the most undergraduates but have not been well studied by past research, are shown to be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of state funding cuts.

We develop a new measure of relative debt transparency by comparing the amount of state debt reported in the annual Census survey and the amount reported in the statistical section of the state Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). GASB 44 requires states to start reporting their total debt in the CAFR statistical section in FY 2006. However, states are allowed to use accounting choices to exclude some dependent agencies' debt, which contributes to a gap between the two data sources. The regression results suggest that the gap tends to increase when states face greater fiscal stress or less political competition. Such patterns are not found in the pre-GASB 44 period.

This paper assesses the extent to which Rhode Island's workforce lacks skills that are in demand among the state's current and potential employers and, if so, whether such a skills gap or labor market "mismatch" significantly restrains employment growth in the state. Using an index developed by Sahin et al. (2014), we find that occupational mismatch in Rhode Island increased leading up to and during the Great Recession and fell back to pre-recession levels by mid-2013. In 2015:Q2, occupational mismatch restrained quarterly employment growth in Rhode Island by an estimated 0.03 percentage points. However, since 2013 Rhode Island's employment growth rate has exceeded its long-run average, suggesting that the current extent of mismatch in the state is no greater than its long-run average level. Nonetheless, the share of Rhode Island-based jobs filled by out-of-state workers has increased significantly since 2001, a trend driven by jobs that employ college-educated workers. This evidence agrees with some Rhode Island employers' claims that they have trouble filling skilled jobs with Rhode Island resident workers. While this finding suggests that at the broader regional level, occupational mismatch is not a serious problem, regional welfare might yet be improved by training Rhode Island workers to fill such positions. An appendix presents: "Missed Hires Mismatch Index" (Basic and Adjusted).

This paper investigates the impact of immigration on the college enrollment of U.S. natives. Many studies have focused on the effect of increased demand for schooling by immigrants on the enrollment of natives. However, changes in immigrant labor supply may also affect native enrollment by changing local market prices. Using U.S. Census data from 1970 to 2000, I find that state-level increases in the number of immigrant college students do not significantly lower the enrollment rates of U.S. natives. On the contrary, state-level increases in the ratio of unskilled immigrant workers to skilled immigrant workers significantly raise native enrollment rates. These findings suggest that the demand for college is sensitive to wage rates and that college slots are flexibly supplied over a decadal time horizon. An appendix presents "Theory: A Model of Immigration and Native College Enrollment."

This paper examines whether a rise in house prices that occurs immediately prior to children entering college has an impact on their earnings as adults. Higher house prices provide homeowners with additional funds to invest in their children's human capital. The results show that a 1 percentage point increase in house prices, when children are 17 years-old, results in roughly 0.9 percent "higher" annual income for the children of homeowners, and a 1.5 percent "lower" annual income for the children of renters. House price appreciation at age 17 also leads to higher college enrollment rates at age 19 and an increased likelihood of attendance at higher-ranked post-secondary institutions for the children of homeowners, as well as lower college enrollment rates for the children of renters. This Working Paper also includes the following appendices: (1) Data Construction and Summary Statistics; (2) House Prices and Rents; (3) Controlling for Selection into Homeownership; and (4) Intergenerational Mobility.

This policy brief advances the growing literature on how student loan debt affects individuals' other economic decisions. Specifically, it examines the impact of student loan liabilities on individuals' homeownership status and wealth accumulation. The analysis employs a rich set of financial and demographic control variables that are not available in many of the existing studies that use credit bureau data. Overall, student debt lowers the likelihood of homeownership for a group of students who attended college during the 1990s. There is also a fairly strong negative correlation between student loan debt and wealth (excluding student loan debt) for a group of households with at least some college experience. An appendix contains five additional tables.

Aside from effects on nearby property values, research is sparse on how foreclosures may generate negative externalities. Employing a unique dataset that matches individual student records from Boston Public Schools--including test scores, demographics, home address moves, and school changes--with real estate records indicating whether the student lived at an address involved in foreclosure, we investigate the degree to which the test scores of students attending high-foreclosure schools suffer, even among students not directly experiencing foreclosure. We also explore the impact on individual test scores of school-level (by grade and year) student mobility--that is, inflows of new students to a school during the school year--including mobility induced by residential moves (in some cases caused by foreclosures) and mobility arising for other reasons. We find fairly robust evidence that higher student mobility at a school, induced by residential moves, imposes significant negative effects on test scores of students at the receiving school. Beyond this channel, school-level foreclosure prevalence does not appear to generate externalities. Since we also find that residential-move-induced school changes appear to harm the outcomes of the school-changers themselves, policies that seek to limit such changes within the academic year may uniformly raise test scores, at least in the short run. The following are appended: (1) Math Test Score Regressions, (2) ELA Test Score Regressions; and 14 tables.

Foreclosures have well-documented adverse consequences for families living in or owning properties undergoing foreclosure and on surrounding neighborhoods, but they may also have other costs. This policy brief summarizes our research on the impact of mortgage foreclosures on academic performance among Boston public school students. The data show that students who live at an address that experiences a foreclosure tend to score substantially lower on standardized tests (math and English) and also have substantially worse attendance. However, if we account for the influence of student characteristics, housing, and the student's past academic performance on test scores, the size of the foreclosure effects is reduced to nearly zero. We interpret these findings as indicating that underlying (yet unobserved) factors such as economic stress within the family contribute to both poor academic performance and the foreclosure event, rather than implying that foreclosure per se causes deterioration in a student's academic performance. We also find that foreclosures may harm academic performance indirectly by causing an affected student to change schools during the academic year. However, we cannot say with certainty that the strong negative association between a child's performance and school change--whether the change is precipitated by foreclosure or by other circumstances-- reflects a causal relationship. Accordingly, public policies aimed at improving student performance should address family stressors that jointly cause decreased academic performance and foreclosures. Existing school assignment policies in Boston--based as they are on citywide high schools and three broad zones--loosen the link between residential moves and school changes during the school year. Other policies at the school, district, and community level may help to lessen the disruptive effects of academic-year school changes on performance.

This policy brief presents some basic facts about the retention of recent college graduates and changes in retention over time, updating an earlier report on this topic. It shows, for example, how New England compares with other Census divisions, what factors affect its ability to retain graduates, and the reasons why recent college graduates choose to leave New England. These findings can help policymakers, business leaders, and college officials weigh the effectiveness of policy options and collective actions aimed at retaining recent college graduates. [This brief updates the findings from an earlier report NEPPC research report 08-1: "The Future of the Skilled Labor Force in New England: The Supply of Recent College Graduates," by Alicia C. Sasser.]

This policy brief investigates factors affecting New England's supply of recent college graduates and how those factors have changed over time, and suggests steps that states might take to expand this source of skilled labor. (Contains 3 figures.) [This brief summarizes analysis in NEPPC research report 08-1: "The Future of the Skilled Labor Force in New England: The Supply of Recent College Graduates," by Alicia C. Sasser,]

In this paper we analyze the impact of classroom peers on individual student performance with a unique longitudinal data set covering all Florida public school students in grades 3-10 over a five-year period. Unlike many previous data sets used to study peer effects in education, our data set allow us to identify each member of a given student's classroom peer group in elementary, middle, and high school as well as the classroom teacher responsible for instruction. As a result, we can control for individual student fixed effects simultaneously with individual teacher fixed effects, thereby alleviating biases due to endogenous assignment of both peers and teachers, including some dynamic aspects of such assignments. Our estimation strategy, which focuses on the influence of peers' fixed characteristics--both observed and unobserved--on individual test score gains, also alleviates potential biases due to error in measuring peer quality, simultaneity of peer outcomes, and mean reversion. Under linear-in-means specifications, estimated peer effects are small to non-existent, but we find some sizable and significant peer effects within non-linear models. For example, we find that peer effects depend on an individual student's own ability and on the ability level of the peers under consideration, results that suggest Pareto-improving redistributions of students across classrooms and/or schools. Estimated peer effects tend to be smaller when teacher fixed effects are included than when they are omitted, a result that suggests co-movement of peer and teacher quality effects within a student over time. We also find that peer effects tend to be stronger at the classroom level than at the grade level. (Appended to this document is "Comparison of Estimation Methods Using Simulated Data." Contains 28 footnotes and 10 tables.)

Forty years ago, 96 percent of six-year-old children were enrolled in first grade or above. As of 2005, the figure was just 84 percent. The school attendance rate of six-year-olds has not decreased; rather, they are increasingly likely to be enrolled in kindergarten rather than first grade. This paper documents this historical shift. We show that only about a quarter of the change can be proximately explained by changes in school entry laws; the rest reflects "academic redshirting," the practice of enrolling a child in a grade lower than the one for which he is eligible. We show that the decreased grade attainment of six-year- olds reverberates well beyond the kindergarten classroom. Recent stagnation in the high school and college completion rates of young people is partly explained by their later start in primary school. The relatively late start of boys in primary school explains a small but significant portion of the rising gender gaps in high school graduation and college completion. Increases in the age of legal school entry intensify socioeconomic differences in educational attainment, since lower-income children are at greater risk of dropping out of school when they reach the legal age of school exit. (Contains 9 footnotes and 8 figures.)

Recent news articles and studies have generated concern among New England policy makers and others that the region's supply of young, highly educated professionals is disappearing. The fear is that comparatively high housing and other costs may be driving away many within this highly mobile group. This paper explores trends in the stocks and flows of young professionals, defined as people 25 to 39 with at least a bachelor's degree. The goal is to help policy makers better understand this important demographic story, giving them the facts about how various factors, including migration, are affecting the region's supply of young, educated labor. The story about young professionals turns out to be much more nuanced than headlines suggest. The region has a strong base of young professionals. As of 2005, New England had the largest population of young professionals of any U.S. region, relative to its population of young people and its total household population. At the same time, New England should not take this strong base of young professionals for granted. While the region's young professional population is holding steady, this cohort is growing in all other regions. Many articles and reports conflate young people and young professionals. While it is true that fewer people between 25 and 39 live in New England today than at any time during the past 15 years, the number of those in the specific category of young professionals has not declined, thanks to steady increases in the share of young people who complete college. Additionally, while this decline in young people is often attributed to out-migration, it is due, at least in part, to a large number of individuals who are aging out of the cohort, rather than leaving the region. Finally, stories about out-migration from New England generally consider only domestic migration. While it is true that New England is losing more young professionals to the rest of the nation than it receives domestically, this domestic outflow of young professionals may be offset by young professionals moving to New England from abroad. Though the net number of international immigrants is not available, New England would have to retain only half of those who arrive from abroad in order to replace the flow of young professionals moving to other parts of the nation. In short, a careful analysis of the data indicates that reports of a major "brain drain" from the region are overstated. However, this does not mean that policy makers should take for granted that the region will continue to retain a solid base of young, educated professionals. (Contains 4 footnotes, 4 figures and 3 tables.)

The returns to college are substantial, including increased earnings and public benefits, such as better health and increased involvement in public service and giving. As a result, since the introduction of the Guaranteed Student Loan program in 1965 and the Pell Grant in 1972, the federal government has experimented with using financial aid to increase college access, choice, and affordability. Although years of research support the notion that financial aid can influence students' postsecondary decisions, questions remain about the best ways to design such programs and the relative effectiveness of different types of aid. Due to the fact that an overwhelming proportion of the research on financial aid focuses on grants, little is known about how a recent shift to loans has affected student access to higher education and their choice of institutions. Because loans are a much more complicated form of financial aid than grants, there is reason to suspect that their effectiveness differs from other aid. This paper attempts to provide additional information on the impact of loans on college decisions by focusing on the period during which college loans were made available to all families, regardless of financial need. The major shift in aid policy occurred due to the 1992 Higher Education Reauthorization Act (HEA92). By exploiting this 1992 policy change as a natural experiment, this paper examines the impact of introducing a student loan program on college enrollment and choice. The analysis uses the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) to detail how the number of students in college (e.g., the access question) and the amount of money spent on higher education and related expenses (e.g., the choice question or "how much" education was bought) changed after the policy change. (Contains 14 footnotes, 2 figures, and 8 tables.)

Vermont lawmakers had grappled with the thorny issue of how to finance public education long before the Vermont Supreme Court's 1997 ruling that the state's funding system was unconstitutional. In "Brigham vs. State," the court found that the system in effect at that time violated the state's constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the law and directed the Legislature to establish a system that would afford "substantially equal opportunity" to all Vermont school children. Less than six months after this ruling, lawmakers enacted the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (known as Act 60), under which tax rates and educational opportunities were substantially equalized across school districts by redefining property wealth (for educational purpose) as a state resource. Act 60 and its successor, Act 68, both narrowed disparities in educational funding across school districts. But the issue of who pays for education remains contentious, with calls for further reform driven by the perception that education property tax burdens are unreasonably high and remain inequitable. During this biennium session, the Legislature is expected to consider a range of reform proposals, including repeal of the current system. This paper provides a broad overview of major efforts to reform education finance in Vermont since 1969. Two appendices are included: (1) Additional reading; and (2) Court rulings, legislation, and reform proposals. (Contains 8 footnotes.)

A September 8, 2006, ruling by the New Hampshire Supreme Court that the state's current education financing system is unconstitutional was the latest in a long string of court decisions, legislative responses, and subsequent court opinions that have made school funding one of the state's most contentious issues. This report summarizes how the issue of defining and funding an adequate public education reached this point in New Hampshire. It describes key legal findings and other background behind the string of court decisions defining a constitutional educational system. It examines major education funding bills proposed since the 1997 "Claremont ruling," assessing whether they would likely meet the state's constitutional requirements. Two appendices are included: (1) Key New Hampshire court decisions on education funding; and (2) Key New Hampshire education legislation. (Contains 21 footnotes.)

The New England economy faces even more challenges and uncertainties than the nation as a whole. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and its staff have been involved in the challenges facing public education in New England for many years. Last summer, the Bank's 47th annual economic conference focused on some of these challenges, exploring educational change in the 21st century in this country and around the world. This annual report focuses on education in the New England region, tackling the nature of reforms taking place and assessing progress. The report is divided into nine sections: (1) "Letter from the President"; (2) "Restructuring Public Education"; (3) "2002 Bank Highlights"; (4) "Bank in the Community"; (5) "Board of Directors"; (6) "Senior Officers"; (7) "Advisory Councils"; (8) "Financial Statements"; and (9) "Officers by Department." (BT)

This pamphlet recaps the chain of events known as The Bank Panic of 1907. Historians view this as a watershed event that had a lasting impact on the financial system of the United States. The panic resulted from the collapse of the United Copper Company and was averted with the intervention of John D. Rockefeller and the J. P. Morgan Company. The pamphlet is divided into three parts: (1) "In Which the Downfall of a Prominent Speculator Rocks the Financial System, and a Prominent Millionaire Saves the Day"; (2) "Panic of 1907: Movers and Shakers"; and (3) "Parallel History: Everyday People." (EH)

This pamphlet summarizes a conference in Boston on May 6, 1986. Its goal was to assess and plan strategies for the dropout problem in the Boston Public Schools. The Boston Compact, the draft plan contained in this document and prepared before the conference, served as the focus for discussion. Educators and administrators from across the country formed work groups to offer suggestions and recommendations for the plan. Some speakers and their topics were the following: (1) welcome addresss, William S. Edgerly; (2) "The Challenge of High-Risk Youth to Boston and the Nation," Julian T. Houston; and (3) "A Dropout Prevention and Reentry Proposal," Laval S. Wilson. The Draft Dropout Plan contained the following elements: (1) a statement of goals to reduce the dropout rate and return dropouts to educational programs; (2) background assumptions that explain the relationship between educational services and the decision to drop out; (3) structural issues recommending changes in the way educational and social services are organized; (4) program innovations for basic education; (5) plans for alternative educational programs; (6) plans for community services related to education; and (7) funding strategies. Recommendations from the work group concentrated on the scope and missing elements of the plan. (VM)

The purpose of this pamphlet is to teach the value of money, to understand the numbers and symbols on U.S. dollar bills, and to provide the history and facts behind U.S. currency. The following words, symbols, or numbers on dollar bills are identified: (1) legal tender; (2) Federal Reserve Note; (3) Federal Reserve Bank's seal and code letter; (4) treasury seal; (5) serial numbers; (6) faceplate numbers and letters; (7) series identification; and (8) the portraits and the designs. Points of interest, other types of U.S. currency, and the Great Seal of the United States are also explained. (DJC)